An article from MIT’s Sloan School of Management details the ongoing adoption of AI in American businesses:

A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research about early adoption of AI in the U.S. provides a more nuanced look at which companies are adopting AI, where they are located, and what technologies they are using. Work smart with our Thinking Forward newsletterInsights from MIT experts, delivered every Tuesday morning.Email Address

The research shows variation in AI adoption, according to Kristina McElheran, a visiting scholar with the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and the paper’s lead author. Just 6% of U.S. companies used AI in 2017, the researchers found, and AI use was concentrated in larger companies and in industries such as manufacturing and information technology. Adoption was also clustered in some “superstar” cities, such as San Francisco, San Antonio, and Nashville.

“The narrative is that AI is everywhere all at once, but the data shows it’s harder to do than people seem interested in discussing,” said McElheran, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

“The digital age has arrived, but it has arrived unevenly,” she said.  

As William Gibson noted, the future is already here – just unevenly distributed.

Read the article here.